The government junkets you fund

The spendthrift HHS has been among the worst transgressors -- burning through more than $300 million on conferences between 2000-2005. Several of the department's publicly subsidized trips to AIDS conferences have featured free condom distribution to participants, sex- and drug-themed sessions, and in one case, giveaways of a map to area brothels.

Jet-setting bureaucrats do more than waste money on these working vacations. They are also undermining our nation's best interests. The State Department has sent its employees to confabs convened by a soft-on-terrorism outfit, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (whose executive director blamed Israel in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks), as well as to a counterterrorism conference in Saudi Arabia that deliberately excluded Israel and instead welcomed the Islamist Muslim World League -- considered by U.S. counterterrorism officials to be a financial supporter of al Qaeda.

Blowhards in both parties in Washington have pledged to reduce spending and reform business as usual. Yet, Sen. Coburn's attempt to limit conference spending by just one agency -- HUD -- was anonymously stripped from an appropriations bill behind closed doors and unceremoniously killed.

Who did it? Let's have some transparency. Step forward and tell us why.

You want reform? You want smaller government? There's $1,401,104,263 and counting just waiting to be targeted.